Separating E.coli from worms

i found a very interesting and a simple method to separate worms and e.coli, washed from a plate. when the tube containing the worm suspension along with the bacteria is left to stand at room temperature for half an hour the worms settle at the bottom of the tube, including the larval stages. Most of the E.coli in the suspension remains in the liquid.

For what it’s worth, I’ve found this is a very easy way to also separate adults and their progeny after washing them off of a plate. Adults settle into a loose “pellet” in less than a minute, but L1s do not settle as quickly. So I just suck off the sup as soon as it looks like most adults have settled, which seems to reduce the L1s by ~10 fold. Repeat that a few times and you can remove almost all progeny while keeping the vast majority of adults